"Classic" Movie Review: Never Ever

Never Ever

Directed by: Benoît Jacquot.

Written by: Julia Roy based on the novel by Don DeLillo.

Starring: Mathieu Amalric (Jacques Rey), Julia Roy (Laura), Jeanne Balibar (Isabelle).

 

I have not read Don DeLillo’s The Body Artist – the short novel that was adapted by Julia Roy and director by Benoit Jacquot into the film Never Ever – but I can say seeing the film that there are some novels that just were not made to become movies. DeLillo’s book is said to contain a running internal monologue of the main character, which the movie completely forgoes – which doesn’t work at all in the film, because the main character is a complete blank in the movie. If we do not understand her, we cannot understand the rest of the movie – which is unfortunately what happens here, as Never Ever becomes a dull mess of a film.

 

The film opens with Jacques Rey (Mathieu Amalric) as a famed director, presenting his latest film in an art gallery. Having a few hours to kill until it ends and he has to do a Q&A, he wanders through the exhibits in the museum, before coming across Laura (Julia Roy) – a “Body Artist” doing her routine, which essentially seems to be moving her body slowly, drawing attention to different parts of her body. I, admittedly, know nothing about what being a “body artist” entails – and this film doesn’t really help clarify that much – because almost as soon as the routine is over, Jacques convinces Laura to run off with him on his motorcycle – abandoning the q&a and his longtime girlfriend/star. Isabelle (Jeanne Balibar) and whisking Laura off to his isolated, rented home. The two are quickly in love, and get married – even though there are already some strange noises in the house. Jacques abandons everything in his life – but after meeting with Isabelle one last time, he kills himself (or appears to) in a motorcycle “accident”. Most of the rest of the movie is spent with Laura in that isolated house – now with more noises – as Jacques either returns and haunts her, or as she slips into insanity, depending on how you choose to read things.

 

There are numerous problems with the movie that fatally hurt it – the biggest single one however is that there seems to be no real chemistry between Jacques and Laura while he is alive. Their relationship honestly plays like the kind of delusional fantasy older men often write stories about – where the older man falls in love with a young woman and is re-energized as a result. But even that reading would require there be some sort of deeper connection between Jacques and Laura that simply doesn’t exist – if he is draw to her youth and beauty, what precisely is it about him that draws her? Does Jacques have unfinished business with her, and that’s why he appears before her after he dies, or is she so in love with him that she cannot bear to not have him in her life, so she creates a delusional version of him for herself? If the movie knows the answer to this question, it isn’t saying – and it’s not in an ambiguous, open too many interpretations way – the main character played by Roy is such a blank slate for the entire movie, it’s impossible to get any read at all on her, or her feelings.

 

The film is pretty to look at. The house where most of the action takes place in one of the beautiful, older, rundown homes out in the French countryside, and Jacquot’s camera glides through it wonderfully. Yet, there’s a giant whole in the center of the film – and that is precisely who this lead character is, and why we’re spending so much time with her? What is she going through, and why are we watching it? The film never comes up with an answer to this question – so the movie just kind of sits there on screen, and we sit in the audience, bored.

 

Note: I saw this film at TIFF 2016 and wrote this review then. The film still hasn’t come out in North America since – and at this point, probably won’t, so rather than sit on the review, I thought I’d post it.

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Classic Movie Review: Carnival of Souls (1962)

Carnival of Souls (1962)

Directed by:Herk Harvey.   

Written by:John Clifford. 

Starring: Candace Hilligoss (Mary Henry), Frances Feist (Mrs. Thomas – Landlady), Sidney Berger (John Linden), Art Ellison (Minister), Stan Levitt (Dr. Samuels), Herk Harvey (The Man).

 

Apparently Carnival of Souls became a cult hit because it aired on TV late at night often – and that makes complete and total sense. It isn’t a particularly scary movie, but it is a completely and totally surreal one, a film that plays a strange dream edging into nightmare territory, that doesn’t really operate according to our logic, but a more dreamlike one. It would be the perfect film to watch if you stumbled out of bed at 1 in the morning, and couldn’t get back to sleep – or perhaps even better, drifting in and out of sleep as you watched it, never being quite sure what you saw and what you imagined. The film wasn’t really noticed when it was released in 1962 – it was starred unknown actors, and had a first time director and writer (neither of whom would go on to make another film) – and yet it became a key inspiration for filmmakers like George A. Romero and David Lynch.

 

The film opens with two cars full of young people doing what you’d expect two cars full of young people to do – acting like idiots. There is an accident, one of the cars – carrying a trio of girls – goes off a bridge into the water. Hours later, one of the girls – Mary (Candace Hilligoss) emerges – apparently fine. She doesn’t want to stick around her small town however – and has a job lined up as a church organist in Salt Lake City. On the drive two strange things happen – first, she says the ghostly face of a man in her car window – giving her a momentary fright (that man will appear frequently throughout the film) – and the second is she drives by an abandoned carnival on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, and is drawn in by its haunted atmosphere.

 

The plot of the movie from there is fairly thin – Mary is a strange young woman, and you can never quite tell how she’ll act next. One of the weaknesses in the film is that because the film starts with the accident, we never really know what she was like beforehand – and because she leaves everyone who knows her behind, we don’t know just how much she has changed from before. The film implies that Mary has become sexually frigid – because of the accident, although considering she only rejects her creepy across the hall neighbor, I don’t think that really works.

 

Still, the movie isn’t so much about its plot – or even, really, about its characters. It is all about the atmosphere – and on that level what director Herk Harvey accomplished with $30,000 and a three week shooting schedule is pretty amazing. Apparently inspired by the likes of Bergman and Cocteau, Harvey went out to try and achieve something similar to those masters shooting in Kansas. What’s amazing is how close he really got. The sound design here is brilliant (a definite influence on Lynch – who since Eraserhead, has obsessed about sound) – to help create the otherworldly atmosphere – but it goes deeper than that. The limited budget perhaps helped here – the editing is strange (how much coverage do you think he could have shot), and the performances don’t feel at all natural. That may just be because the actors aren’t very good, but it certainly contributes to the strange overall feel of the movie. The big set pieces here are not scares or special effects – but simply when Mary has a few breaks with reality, and no one around her can see or hear her – and she runs around trying in vain to be noticed. This leads up to the brilliant climax at the carnival itself – which if you can watch without thinking of Night of the Living Dead, it’s probably because you haven’t seen Romero’s masterpiece.

 

As a film unto itself, Carnival of Souls is not a masterpiece, but it sure is creepy and effective – creating images and sounds that stay with you, long after the plot and characters have faded away. As a key influence on horror films going forward though, its impact has been invaluable. I wish it had found its cult status earlier in its life cycle – and that perhaps Herk Harvey could have made something else. Now, it’s one of those rare unicorns – like Charles Laughton’s Night of the Hunter, Barbara Loden’s Wanda or Leonard Kastle’s The Honyemoon Killers – great films by a director who never made another one. .

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Classic Movie Review: Zombi 2 (1979)

Zombi 2

Directed by: Lucio Fulci.

Written by: Elisa Briganti.

Starring: Tisa Farrow (Anne Bowles), Ian McCulloch (Peter West), Richard Johnson (Dr. Menard), Al Cliver (Brian Hull), Auretta Gay (Susan Barrett), Stefania D'Amario (Nurse Clara), Olga Karlatos (Mrs. Menard).

 

The idea of a zombie fighting a shark is one that is so good, you wonder why it took so long for someone to come up with it – and why we haven’t seen it copied a million times since. Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2 (aka Zombie) has built its entire reputation on one, about five minute sequence when a shark starts to stalk a potential victim (who is scuba diving topless, as beautiful young women are wont to do in horror movie), but instead ends up fighting a zombie, who zooms out of the depths, at first at the naked young diver, but then finds himself embroiled in a fight with a shark. The actual zombie vs. shark part of this sequence is less than two minutes, and its set to a strange score – softer core porn music than horror movie. This whole sequence – from when the girl goes into the water, to its completion, runs about 6 minutes, and I loved every second of it. Unfortunately, there are 85 other minutes of Zombi 2 that have nothing to do with topless scuba divers or zombies fighting sharks – and there’s nothing much there.

 

The reason the original title of the movie was Zombi 2, was because George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead was a hit in Italy, and when released there was entitled simply Zombi. The movie has nothing to do with Romero’s film – I don’t even think that had any sort of rights deal with him – they just want a quick, cheap knock-off to make some money. The fact that the film is remembered at all nearly 40 years later – let alone that it inexplicably shows up on lists of the greatest horror films of all time (ranked in the top 100 of the They Shoot Zombies, Don’t They? List) is likely a surprise to all involved.

 

The film opens in New York – with one of those scare scenes that horror films are obligated to open with. A seemingly abandoned boat, turns out not to be so abandoned. A policeman is killed, the owner of the boat’s niece wants answers, and ends up with a reporter heading to the Caribbean, where that boat had just come from. It’s there where this supposed zombie outbreak had begun. The pair end up with another couple on a boat, heading for a “deserted” island where everything started. The movie owes more to something like Island of Lost Souls or perhaps I Walked with a Zombie than Romero’s film.

 

All of it is fairly lame. There is some more gratuitous T&A – nothing as silly as the topless scuba diving, but none of it germane to the plot either. There is lots of fake blood spill, and zombie bites, etc. – if you’ve seen a zombie film, you know the drill. What’s lacking is any real reason for being – the best zombie movies use the genre to make some sort of comment on, well, something – Zombi 2 just wants to be a cheaper exploitation film. On that level, I’m still not sure the film really works all that well. Somehow director Fulci – a pretty big figure in Giallo horror films of Italy, but not as accomplished as Argento or Bava – somehow takes things a little too seriously. The film doesn’t have the goofy pleasure – other than that shark sequence – needed. It also isn’t grimy or blood enough to be one of those horror movies I don’t like much, but have a big following in that they leave wanting to take a shower.

 

In short, Zombi 2 is brilliant for about 7 minutes total – the six minutes of the scuba diving/shark vs. zombie sequence, and the final minute, which really is an effective ending to a horror movie like this (oh, and the eye scene is pretty cool too). Other than that, it’s a fairly dull slog of a horror movie, without much to recommend it.

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Classic Movie Review: Woyzeck (1979)

Woyzeck (1979)

Directed by: Werner Herzog.

Written by: Werner Herzog based on the play by Georg Büchner.

Starring: Klaus Kinski (Woyzeck), Eva Mattes (Marie), Wolfgang Reichmann (Captain), Willy Semmelrogge (Doctor), Josef Bierbichler (Drum Major), Paul Burian (Andres), Volker Prechtel (Handwerksbursche), Dieter Augustin (Marktschreier), Irm Hermann (Margret).

 

One of the reasons why almost all of Werner Herzog’s best films of the last 30 years are documentaries is because when he lost Klaus Kinski, he lost one of the only actors who was able to match the level of insanity that Herzog needed in his fiction films (the one exception is of course Nicolas Cage in Bad Lieutenant:: Port of Call, New Orleans). The pair of them made five films together – of which Woyzeck was the third, and far and away the least, of these collaborations. There just isn’t very much here in this sleight film, about a man beaten down by life until he ends up murdering his wife. These two combined to make two of the all-time great portraits of madness – Aguirre the Wrath of God and Fitzcaraldo – but Woyzeck never comes close to matching them, and I cannot help but think that perhaps Kinski is even miscast.

 

In the film, Kinski plays the title character – a put upon soldier, tormented by those above him in the army, for reasons the movie never really tries to explain (he is on an all pea diet for example, but no one will say why). He is pushed around, abused, beaten and disrespected – but it isn’t until his wife cheats on him with a drum major that he really, truly loses it – leading to a slow motion climax, which is just about the only thing in the film that works.

 

Kinski was, of course, brilliant at playing insane characters – perhaps because he was kind of nuts himself (Herzog’s documentary on him – My Best Fiend is a better use of your time than this, and documents their relationship). Here though, his Woyzeck seems insane at the start of the film, so his descent into madness doesn’t really mean much – he’s already there. If Woyzeck is supposed to be an everyman, driven insane by the system, pushing down on the common man, than the film fails – because Kinski never really seems normal here.

 

Herzog is adapting a play by George Buchner, but his screenplay is odd, as many scenes play out without much in the way of dialogue, making the action confusing, and Woyzeck’s motivations unknowable. The film was made in the immediate aftermath of Herzog and Kinski’s other (and better) 1979 film, Nosferatu – Kinski using the fatigue of that film to his advantage here. Yet the film never really comes together. It’s only 82 minutes long, and that slow motion climax really is something to behold – yet the film is more of interest to Herzog/Kinski completest than anyone else. You’d be better off watching anything else the pair did together than this one though.

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Classic Movie Review: Wise Blood (1979)

Wise Blood (1979)

Directed by: John Huston.

Written by: Benedict Fitzgerald & Michael Fitzgerald based on the novel by Flannery O'Connor.

Starring: Brad Dourif (Hazel Motes), Dan Shor (Enoch Emory), Harry Dean Stanton (Asa Hawks), Amy Wright (Sabbath Lily), Mary Nell Santacroce (Landlady), Ned Beatty (Hoover Shoates), William Hickey (Preacher), John Huston (Grandfather).

 

John Huston’s Wise Blood, based on the novel by Flannery O’Connor, is a very strange movie indeed. It is a redemption story of sorts – the story a non-believer, a nihilist really, who comes back into the fold and embraces Jesus in the end, although by then he has lost pretty much everything else in his life, so it may well have been better for him not to find Jesus (at least, in this life). It is a story of holy and unholy fools – crooks and charlatans – although according the movie at least, that doesn’t mean that Jesus isn’t real.

 

The main character in the film is Hazel Motes and he’s played with single minded determination by a perfectly cast Brad Dourif. He returns from the war (the film never specifies which one – although O’Connor’s novel in set in post WWII, the film however doesn’t have the trappings of a period piece – perhaps due to budget constraints – so it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say Vietnam), and goes back to his small, Southern hometown. There is a new highway there – opened, he’s told, just long enough for everyone to drive away from town. None of his family is left – we glimpse his preacher Grandfather (played by Huston himself) – is flashbacks, but no one else. Hazel ends up heading into the city, where he plans to start street preaching. But he is not a typical street preacher, talking about how Jesus saves – just the opposite really. His is a “Church without Christ” - “where the blind don’t see and the lame don’t walk and what’s dead stays that way”. Despite all his supposed hatred of Jesus, Hazel has the passion of a true zealot – he rarely talks of anything other than his Church, and spreading his “gospel”. If Wise Blood is anything, it is a reminder of that old saying – the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. Hazel doesn’t really hate Jesus – he’s just mad at him, perhaps because of what happened during the war (he says he has an injury, but doesn’t want people to know where), or perhaps because of the fire and brimstone his grandfather preached (which scared him so much, he wet himself).

 

While in the city, Hazel meets a series of fools, crooks and charlatans. He isn’t there long before he finds a new follower – the hapless Enoch Emory (Dan Shor), who becomes committed to him despite the cruelty in which Hazel treats him. Enoch is clearly a lonely, somewhat dimwitted young man, who will eventually end up in a gorilla suit in another ill advised obsession. There is Asa Hawks (the great Harry Dean Stanton), a supposedly blind street preacher, and his daughter Sabbath Lily (Amy Wright). They are scam artists – he isn’t really blind, despite what his “clipping” says (he supposedly was going to blind himself for Jesus). Sabbath Lily sets her sets on Hazel herself. There’s Hoover Shoates (Ned Beatty), who hears Hazel’s pitch, and likes it – he feels there is a lot of money to be made from it, but when Hazel doesn’t get on board – it isn’t a scam to him – Shoates simply goes out and hires someone to give the same sermon (William Hickey). Finally, there is Hazel’s landlady (Mary Nell Santacroce), who seems so kindly – but of course, even she has something else on her mind.

 

There is nothing new about redemption stories – and yet Wise Blood is one of the strangest ones you will see. It isn’t really about a saint among sinners – we see Hazel Motes do a hell of lot of bad things. It is the work of a cynical Christian – but a Christian just the same. For the most part, the film follows O’Connor’s novel fairly closely – even if Huston initially had a different interpretation – he thought he’d be making a satire about Southern religion, which in a way, I guess he was – he was still the right choice to direct. Huston is one of the few directors who was able to take difficult, literary material and turn it into a film that is both faithful to the novel, and works as film itself. The film isn’t perfect – I find, in particular, that the scenes leading to the ending could use a little more clarity – but mainly, it is a fine adaptation of a difficult novel.

 

Lots of things helped here – including, oddly enough, the lack of a budget. It is a small budgeted film, and so Huston shot mainly on location in Macon, Georgia – using the rundown city as a perfect backdrop to the film. The lack a definitive time period works here (I often don’t like, as specificity is the soul of narrative – here though it makes it a more quintessential American story). The cast of character actors could hardly be improved upon – Dourif apparently wanted to add more nuance to Hazel, but Huston rightly knew that he was a one note character – whatever he embraces, he embraces fully. Harry Dean Stanton delivers one of his finest in a long line of morally dubious conmen. Amy Wright is a wicked joy as Sabbath Lily. Ned Beatty all smiles as he steals from you – and Hickey is wonderfully pathetic as his sidekick. Santacroce sneaks up on you as the unnamed Landlady – helping in those final scenes.

 

If Wise Blood doesn’t quite rank up with Huston’s best films, that is because of the strength of his resume – from The Maltese Falcon to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre in the 1940s to Prizzi’s Honor and The Dead in the 1980s, and much in between, Huston had a varied, wonderful directing career. Wise Blood is a little seen, underrated late career highlight for him – and everyone else involved.

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Classic Movie Review: Winter Kills (1979)

Winter Kills (1979)

Directed by: William Richert.   

Written by: William Richert based on the novel by Richard Condon.

Starring: Jeff Bridges (Nick Kegan), John Huston (Pa Kegan), Anthony Perkins (John Cerruti), Eli Wallach (Joe Diamond), Sterling Hayden (Z.K. Dawson), Dorothy Malone (Emma Kegan), Tomas Milian (Frank Mayo), Belinda Bauer (Yvette Malone), Ralph Meeker (Gameboy Baker), Toshirô Mifune (Keith), Richard Boone (Keifitz), David Spielberg (Miles Garner), Brad Dexter (Captain Heller One), Michael Thoma (Ray Doty), Ed Madsen (Captain Heller Two), Irving Selbst (Irving Mentor), Chris Soldo (Jeffreys), Byron Morrow (Secretary of State), Elizabeth Taylor (Lola Comante), John Warner (President Tim Kegan).

 

Winter Kills is a strange movie that was made at just the right moment for it, and yet for some reason, didn’t connect. The film is ostensibly a paranoid thriller, made at the end of the decade in which paranoid thrillers were at their peak, and yet is really a straight faced comedy – it’s thriller elements so silly that they cannot be believed, although no one in the movie lets in that they’re in on the joke. The film should have been perfect for 1979 audiences, and yet the film was a commercial failure at the time. It’s gained a cult following since, yet watching the film, I couldn’t help but feel like I was watching a relic of a previous era, who time had come and gone. I hate using the term dated to describe old movies – yet it’s undeniable that some movies are made for their time, and don’t work outside of it. Winter Kills is that type of movie.

 

The film stars Jeff Bridges as Nick Kegan, the beach bum half-brother of the former American President, killed by an apparent lone gunman nearly 20 years ago. An ex-con confesses to Nick, while on his deathbed, that he was he second gunman that day – and he was hired by an organization he did not know. Nick goes to his powerful father, (John Huston) with the information, who doesn’t want to hear it – but Nick will not give up. He starts a country spanning investigation, meeting people in all walks of life related to his brother, and a possible conspiracy – but as he unravels the plot, the people he meets with keep getting murdered by unknown killers.

 

You could hardly ask for a better cast for a film – Bridges, Huston, Anthony Perkins as an all-powerful Wizard of Oz type character, Eli Wallach as a gangster, Sterling Hayden as a powerful businessman, only seen riding around in a tank, Dorothy Malone as Bridges semi-out there mother, and Elizabeth Taylor, who never speaks, but wanders around looking Elizabeth Taylor. That doesn’t even mention small roles by Ralph Meekler, Toshiro Mifune and Tomas Milian – the film becomes a spot the star cameo game throughout, as these stars come out, have a scene or two, and then disappear. They keep the film watchable, and somewhat enjoyable.

 

But the film never quite finds the right tone – this film was required to walk the razor edge between plausible thriller and satiric comedy, and doesn’t really commit to either. It’s at its best in the most absurd scenes – like Huston’s introduction, accompanied by a large of rich men, who come riding in on golf carts, as if they are an invading army. The film also work in the background more than the foreground – like the presence of a ping pong table at the last place you would expect to see one, which undercuts the seriousness of the scene it’s in.

 

The ultimate problem with Winter Kills is that it doesn’t work as a comedy, a satire of a thriller. It wants to be a paranoid thriller – it is from the author of one of the best ever made, The Manchurian Candidate, but it doesn’t take its premise seriously (if you think about it, The Manchurian Candidate itself is a silly premise – they just sell the hell out of it). But it never quite nails the more satiric or comedic side ether. I could see the film working better in 1979 – having sat through a bunch of these types of films the preceding decade or so, perhaps it better hit those comedic targets. Watching it now through, it doesn’t really work. There’s a lot of talent involved in Winter Kills, and it is a very strange film – it just doesn’t add up to that much.

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Classic Movie Review: The Warriors (1979)

The Warriors

Directed by: Walter Hill.   

Written by: David Shaber and Walter Hill based on the novel by Sol Yurick. 

Starring: Michael Beck (Swan), James Remar (Ajax), Dorsey Wright (Cleon), Brian Tyler (Snow), David Harris (Cochise), Tom McKitterick (Cowboy), Marcelino Sánchez (Rembrandt), Terry Michos (Vermin), Deborah Van Valkenburgh (Mercy), Roger Hill (Cyrus), David Patrick Kelly (Luther), Lynne Thigpen (D.J.).

 

If nobody told you that The Warriors was controversial in 1979, you would never be able to tell it was, watching in in 2017. This vision of gang life in the “near future” in essentially an escapist fantasy, with simple characters that director co-writer/director Walter Hill gives a romantic view – comparing these street gangs with the fighters in Ancient Greece (I watched the directors cut, which highlights this comparison in the beginning – and adds unnecessary comic book panels at various points). Apparently in 1979, this film riled up real street gangs – and inspired violence at screenings, although the extent of which seems to have been exaggerated. Hill says the reason that young people responded to the film so strongly, was because it was a film that didn’t judge or condemn its street gang members – which is true. But the film doesn’t really show us the gang doing anything that we could judge them for. This is a street gang whose whole existence seems to be about being a street gang – with none of the crime that goes along with it. They don’t rob anyone, steal anything or beat up anyone who isn’t a rival gang member – or a cop trying to keep them down. They aren’t racist – all the gangs seem to be fully integrated. What precisely their purpose in being a gang is unclear – they just are.

 

The plot of The Warriors is simple. The title gang is from Coney Island, who come to Manhattan (I think, they’ll end up more than one of the boroughs however) for a huge gang summit. The leader of the biggest gang is killed during his inspirational gang speech, and The Warriors are framed for his murder – their leader essentially beaten to death in the melee. The rest of the gang somehow escape though – and head out on the run. They need to make it make to their own turf, and quick, because word has gotten out (via a DJ, who I assume is the official DJ of gangland, I guess) that they are dead meat. Through the streets and subways, this gang has to fight their way home. There is some infighting – Swan (Michael Beck) and Ajax (James Remar) don’t agree on which one of them should be the leader – but mainly, the eight of them stick together. They even pick up a girl along the way (Deborah Van Valkenburgh) – mainly it appears so that Swan can say misogynistic things to her until she falls in love with him.

 

It’s hard to see the controversy this movie inspired today – everything about its themes, characters and dialogue is so simplistic, straight forward and frankly, dull, that it’s tough to take it seriously as a film about, well, pretty much anything. Yet, the film has become a cult item – something many people still gravitate to. And, to be honest, there is still value to the film. Most of that comes from Hill’s direction – this is a fluid action movies, with a great pace, and a camera that follows, often at length, as these characters go to the dark places in New York. Hill, who has always been a fine director of action (and, for me anyway, not much else), knows precisely what he’s doing in the staging of the action sequences – most of which have an extended buildup, and then are over quickly. As a purely visual experience, I enjoyed The Warriors.

 

As anything approaching social commentary, the film fails though. It presents a New York gang scene that never was, and is never going to be – sanitizing it to the point of making it dull. No, the film didn’t judge its characters – and maybe the gangs of the time liked seeing themselves as heroes. But they’re hardly even that in The Warriors – more than anything, they are bland, boring, one-dimensional characters in a film that works as a visual experience, and not much else.

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Classic Movie Review: Starting Over (1979)

Starting Over (1979)

Directed by: Alan J. Pakula.   

Written by: James L. Brooks based on the novel by Dan Wakefield.

Starring: Burt Reynolds (Phil Potter), Jill Clayburgh (Marilyn Holmberg), Candice Bergen (Jessica Potter), Charles Durning (Mickey Potter), Frances Sternhagen (Marva Potter), Austin Pendleton (Paul), Mary Kay Place (Marie), MacIntyre Dixon (Dan Ryan).

 

Divorce wasn’t something new in 1979 – but Hollywood dealing with it in any sort of serious way, was at least somewhat new at the time. Paul Mazursky’s wonderful An Unmarried Woman had come out the previous year – and was a hit, and an Oscar favorite, and Robert Benton’s Kramer vs. Kramer ended up being the biggest box office and awards hit of 1979. Those two films are, for various reasons, still remembered today – but Alan J. Pakula’s Starting Over has pretty much been forgotten. It’s easy to see why – it’s not a great film and Pakula is one of those great journeymen directors – who did everything from Klute to The Parallax View to All the President’s Men to Sophie’s Choice – who is more craftsmen that auteur, and those guys tend to get overlooked. It is the first screenplay by James L. Brooks – in between his sitcom career and the Oscar winning Terms of Endearment (1983) – but those looking for Brooks’ best work, will find it elsewhere. The film is uneven – Roger Ebert called it a sitcom version of An Unmarried Woman – and he wasn’t exactly wrong. Yet, it does have three good performances at its core, and it is trying for something interesting. I don’t think it quite gets there – Brooks it seems didn’t have the guts to go where he would in Broadcast News, and instead the film insists on a happy end that doesn’t make much sense – but this little curiosity of a film is worth seeing.

 

The film opens with Paul (Burt Reynolds) and his wife Jessica (Candice Bergen) breaking up – she wants him to leave, he doesn’t want to, but does anyway – something made easier by the discovery that she has been unfaithful to him. As he leaves, the audience is treated to, for the first time, a hilariously bad song by Jessica, sung wonderfully awfully by Bergen – who is convinced she’s going to have a hit on her hands (and, of course, she’s right). Paul ends up moving to Boston to be near his brother (Charles Durning), and try and peace his life back together. It is his brother’s wife who introduces him to Marilyn (Jill Clayburgh) – a nursey school teacher, who at first doesn’t want to date Paul – she has had it with divorced guys –but eventually she relents. They seem perfect for each other – he even says as much to his “divorced men’s support group” – but is he really over Jessica? When she shows up in Boston one day, wanting him back, what will he do?

 

Reynolds is, I think, an underrated actor. Sure, he has done more bad movies than good (and some are downright horrible), but he was one of the biggest male movie stars of the 1970s for a reason. He has an effortless charm about him here – making the fact that women are drawn to him understandable. Bur Reynolds also does a fine job showing us Paul’s insecurity – his hesitation in jumping into bed with Marilyn, the way he loves her, but is still drawn to Jessica. Of the three leads, it is Reynolds who has the most screen time, and delivers the most subtle performance. His two female co-stars both got Oscar nominations – and they are both wonderful, but their roles give them more showoff moments. Bergen steals every scene she is in here – she is downright hilarious when she sings, and she is the right mixture of infuriating, alluring and annoying to make at least some of what Paul does plausible. Clayburgh is wonderful as Marilyn as well – a somewhat kooky woman, who is happy in her life alone without Paul before he arrives, but willingly lets her guard down – even if she fears being destroyed. Both women are able to convey at least some complexity underneath all the humor in the movie – and judging on the basis of this movie, it’s a shame neither was given a great role in a Woody Allen movie at some point. They would have nailed them.

 

The problem with the movie is mainly in Brooks’ screenplay. While his ear for dialogue was already well-tuned – there is never a doubt about who wrote the thing – the plot mechanics creak under the weight of all the clichés, and as the film progresses, the characters make decisions that just don’t make any sense – right up to the happy ending. I know that Brooks is dealing with romantic comedy standards here – but it makes for an uneasy mixture with the divorce drama he’s also writing. By the time he made Terms of Endearment, he had mastered this tricky comedy/drama tone he does so well (he perfected it in Broadcast News) – but here, whether it’s Pakula’s direction (he was a journeyman – but many a thriller journeyman) or more likely Brooks’ screenplay, the mix is off.

 

Starting Over is an interesting film – it’s interesting to watch Brooks before he perfected his style, it’s interesting to see Pakula try his hand at comedy, and it has three performances that help paper over the films rough patches – mostly (as great as Clayburgh is, I have a tough time with that last scene in the movie). It’s mainly been forgotten – and there’s a reason for that. But it was also an Oscar nominated hit in 1979 – and there was a reason for that as well.

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Classic Movie Review: Richard Pryor: Live in Concert (1979)

Richard Pryor: Live in Concert

Directed by: Jeff Margolis 

Written by: Richard Pryor 

Starring: Richard Pryor.

 

Richard Pryor: Live in Concert both invented – and perfected – the stand-up comedian concert film. The film was shot, produced and distributed independently – hitting theaters in early 1979, after being film in December 1978 – and was the first film to be an entire stand-up comedian’s act – which is amazing when you think of it –why did it take so long? In an age when Netflix seemingly drops a few stand-up specials evert week, something like Richard Pryor: Live in Concert can probably be viewed as one of the most influential films of its era – and that would be true even if the film was so hilarious – which it is.

 

The film is only 78 minutes long, and is just Pryor stalking the stage in Long Beach, California – to a largely white audience – who eat up every moment of Pryor’s routine. A comedy album of Pryor would undoubtedly be funny – but it is his physical presence, the way he twists and turns his body that makes much of what he’s doing out and out hilarious. Whether he’s showing the difference between how white and black walk through the forest, the various reactions of a deer, recreating his amateur boxing career, impersonating his grandmother as she beats him with a switch, or curls up on the stage as he recreates his heart attack, Pryor shows just what a brilliant physical comedian he was. This is not a lazy man’s comedy performance – ones where the comedian stand on stage in one spot (or get a stool) and tell jokes from 90 minutes – this really is a whole body performance. And it’s brilliant.

 

It’s also honest – as Pryor, as always, isn’t afraid to air his demons on stage. True, his recounting of the incident where he shot his car to stop his wife from leaving him is short – but it’s there, and he doesn’t make excuses for it. There is material about his drug use, his family life – and even a joke about police killing black people. Pryor doesn’t hold back – even though, at his heart, he really is a stand-up comedian like everyone else. He’s just better at it.

 

In 1979, Pryor needed a movie like this to accurately capture who and what he was onstage. Today, he could do any number of TV specials, where he is able to say or do whatever he wanted – but in 1979, that would have been impossible. I didn’t count the number of times Pryor says “nigger” in 78 minutes, but I’d be shocked if he didn’t average at least one per minute. It was smart of Pryor – and his people – to do a movie like this, and to keep it relatively simple. The director, Jeff Margolis – has basically spent his career doing concert specials and films, and knows what’s doing – point the camera at Pryor, and let him go.

 

There isn’t much to say about the film unless I would start recounting jokes – which I won’t do. It is a great film, and one of the most influential of its time – both in terms of format, and content for modern comedians. It is a showcase for Pryor’s particular brand of genius – and it’s brilliant.

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